Wednesday, 14 October 2009

‘Beatles to Bowie: The 60s Exposed’ opens tomorrow at the National Portrait Gallery to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of the 60s, next year. Showcasing over 150 portraits of the leading pop personalities of the 1960s and a range of memorabilia including record covers and magazines, the exhibition explores the pop scene of ‘Swinging London’. The display is divided into ten sections covering each year of the decade and includes classic images of bands such as The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Who, as well as previously unseen images.

The evolution of the art scene over the decade is striking: the style and techniques of photography changed, as well as, and almost in parallel with, pop music and culture. Most fascinating is the interaction between photography and the pop scene. To what extent did they evolve independently; how far did the two influence one another?

Photography evolved from static black and white portraits to dynamic and colourful photographs taken ‘on the spot’ and depicting artists in action, such as Fiona Adams’ iconic photograph of The Beatles jumping on a wall taken in 1963. The pop scene also became increasingly diverse in terms of style, culture and ethnicity, reflecting the cultural and social developments of the decade. Pure pop was replaced with progressive music and psychedelia and became influenced by new music styles as musicians such as Jemi Hendrix from the United States moved to England.

The exhibition is set against a background of music from the early and late sixties, which can be heard in two different areas of the display and illustrates this stylistic evolution over the course of the decade. A video in the section devoted to the late 1960s also brings some of these icons of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ to life.

The icons of the 1960s pop scene live on in the imagination of generations who were too young to see them perform live and in the memory of those who grew up at the time. The striking portraits on display in ‘Beatles to Bowie’ are a tribute to their influence on the British cultural scene. Despite the music playing in the background, the artists remain, however, surprisingly silent and the exhibition is slightly too static. My request to the disc jockey would be: turn the volume up and let the music play!